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Climbing Back
Development on the Rise in Hartford
A concerted redevelopment push by state leaders creates ripples of private development in Connecticut’s capital region.
by Leonard Felson
New development in Hartford and its surrounding suburbs is robust, signaling that a multiyear revitalization plan crafted by state leaders to spur investment may be paying dividends.
 A wave of privately financed development is afoot several years after Connecticut lawmakers pumped $750 million into a convention center, hotel, college football stadium, and new downtown housing over the past decade.
“Development in the Hartford region continues to grow and is palpable with a number of major projects occurring,” says Sandra Johnson, vice president and business development officer for the MetroHartford Alliance, the city’s chamber of commerce and the leading economic development organization for the 795-sq-mi metropolitan area.
“The work looks tremendous,” adds union spokesman Charles LeConche, business manager for the Connecticut Laborers District Council.
The activity is occurring in virtually every sector, including residential, office, education, institutional, retail, and heavy construction. And it is taking place both in Hartford proper and in the suburbs of its metropolitan area, which has 910,309 residents, according to MetroHartford Alliance.
In town, Hartford’s waterfront district along the Connecticut River still has construction cranes swinging thanks to a large-scale state investment in the $656 million Adriaen’s Landing development, which includes the convention center, a hotel, and other facilities.
And even though Hartford has lost some big names, the region has picked up the slack. A case in point is Holland-based ING, a financial services company, which is leaving its leased space in the city but staying in the region and building a $100 million U.S. headquarters 12 mi north in Windsor [see related sidebar].
Similarly WFSB-TV, which decided to move from its antiquated studios in Hartford’s Constitution Plaza, will open a $23 million, 65,000-sq-ft broadcast facility this fall in Rocky Hill, just south of Hartford.
Busy Mix within Hartford’s Limits
Situated on the east edge of downtown, Adriaen’s Landing is the linchpin for Hartford’s revitalization efforts. The 30-acre, mixed-use riverfront development has several completed projects, one under construction, and another set to start.
The primary construction effort is currently the work on the $150 million Connecticut Science Center, which will rise this year on top of a three-story underground parking garage. Work on the garage is slated to finish this month.
The 144,000-sq-ft steel-framed, glass-faced center, designed by New Haven-based Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, is scheduled for completion by mid-2008, under the direction of Whiting-Turner Contracting, a Baltimore-based construction company.
The science center is wedged into a parcel next to the Connecticut Convention Center – a $230 million, 550,000-sq-ft building that opened in 2005 – and a 22-story, 409-room, $77 million Marriott hotel, which opened shortly after the convention center.
Construction of Front Street, the final piece at Adriaen’s Landing, is scheduled to break ground in June, according to H.B. Nitkin Group of Greenwich, Conn., the developer. Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York is designing the 7.5-acre site, which is across Columbus Boulevard from the convention center, hotel, and science center.
The 18-month Front Street project calls for building 115 apartments in three to four stories above 60,000 sq ft of street-level retail space.
State leaders did not just pump money into Adriaen’s Landing. They also partly subsidized another major development, a downtown mixed-use community called Hartford 21.
The $160 million, 36-story building on the site of the former Hartford Civic Center opened in September and by early February, the developer, Northland Investment of Newton, Mass., had leased 25 percent of its 262 apartments. It is happy with that pace because of the traditionally slower winter rental market, says Peter Standish, Northland’s senior vice president of acquisitions and development.
“We’ve got strong, steady action,” he adds.
This summer, Bliss Market, a locally prominent upscale supermarket, will move into 7,000 sq ft of street-level retail space within Hartford 21 in what will become the first major downtown food store in decades. And late last year, the local YMCA relocated its health and fitness center and administrative offices into 37,000 sq ft of space in the building.
Meanwhile, Northland is negotiating with city officials on tax increment financing for a $117 million, 250-unit luxury condominium tower where the city’s YMCA building now stands, opposite downtown’s Bushnell Park. The 33-story building with 30,000 sq ft of ground floor retail space and an underground parking garage is planned for construction by early 2009, after the YMCA building is demolished.
Northland, which has become the largest private landlord in Hartford with 4.5 million sq ft of space valued at $500 million, is also lobbying state lawmakers to build a new sports complex in the city that would accommodate an NHL hockey team. The city used to be home to the Hartford Whalers hockey franchise before it left in 1997, heading to Raleigh, N.C., to become the Carolina Hurricanes.
Standish says Northland recognizes that “all the pieces you need to turn this city around and make it a vital destination were coming together and we became involved and committed to that.”
Other downtown housing projects also are in the works. They include a conversion and renovation that New Haven developer David Nyberg is finishing this year on the former 160,000-sq-ft American Airlines office building on Main Street to create condominiums. Nyberg had also renovated the former Southern New England Telephone building nearby into 130 apartments and another building called the Metropolitan into 50 condos in 2003.
Also nearly complete is a $45 million conversion of the former Sage-Allen department store on the other side of Main Street by 18 Temple Street LLC. It includes 78 market-rate apartments, ground-floor retail, and 42 townhouses built as housing for 168 college students and corporate summer interns.
In the commercial sector, Hartford-based Aetna is investing close to $200 million in its downtown headquarters campus, which includes the building that ING is vacating for its move to Windsor. Aetna owns that building, which abuts its headquarters, and plans to relocate 3,400 employees from nearby Middletown into that space.
Aetna is also building a pair of $30 million parking garages, each with 1,500 parking spaces.
Development Extends Well Beyond Downtown
Not all new development is focused in the central business district. Plans are under way over the next two years to expand and rebuild five schools within Hartford’s city limits. Meanwhile, new residential development beyond the downtown is occurring in part because City Hall has streamlined the development process, says Eddie Perez, Hartford’s mayor.
“The market is still growing,” Perez says. “There’s pent-up demand with about 2,000 units in the planning or discussion stage.”
One of those planned developments is Plaza Mayor, a $28.5 million project in design stage at Park and Main streets. The project will mark the first major development at the gateway to the region’s largest Hispanic business district.
A partnership between A & Co. of New York and Solaris Group, a Hartford-based partnership of Park Street area investors, is developing the project, which calls for a plaza bordered by 44 townhouse units, 30,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant space, and a 7,000-sq-ft banquet hall.
Less than 1 mi away is Colt Gateway, a $120 million renovation of a 12-building, 17-acre former Colt Firearms armory off of Interstate 91. A phase under construction by Homes for America Holdings will renovate one building into more than 200 residential units.
New Push Ahead in the Suburbs Other large-scale regional projects are moving forward, too, including a $1.6 billion, 15-year overhaul of the sewage system operated by the Metropolitan District Commission. Voters in eight jurisdictions, including Hartford, approved the sale of $800 million in bonds for the capital plan in November.
The program begins this year with the awarding of $80 million worth of engineering and construction contracts, along with another $100 million in contracts to be let next year. The so-called Clean Water Project’s first phase, worth $800 million and scheduled to run over nine years, calls for general system pipeline rehabilitation and sewer line separation as the agency seeks to reduce persistent system overflows and eliminate sewage backups into residential basements during rainstorms.
“Pretty much every year for the next 15 years, there will be construction activity in Hartford and the surrounding seven member towns,” says Robert Weimar, the commission’s chief of program management.
Another regional project, announced in January, calls for construction of a $495 million hospital in Farmington, west of Hartford on the campus of the University of Connecticut Health Center. It would replace the 32-year-old John Dempsey Hospital, which has never been renovated. The planned six-story, 354-bed, 546,000-sq-ft facility still awaits state legislative approval for financing and health care licenses.
Other major suburban office, retail, and residential developments are also under construction or being planned in the metro area. One of the splashiest is in West Hartford, where Blue Back Square, a $159 million mixed-use development, will add 600,000 sq ft of retail, office, and residential space in the central business district, known as West Hartford Center.
“They’ve virtually leased everything and the condos and apartments are three-quarters sold or leased,” says Ron Van Winkle, West Hartford director of community services.
Anchor tenants include Crate & Barrel, Barnes & Noble, the Cheesecake Factory, REI, and Criterion Cinemas. A new Whole Foods market opened more than a year ago across from the development. The residential units are selling on a range from $350,000 to $950,000.
Meanwhile, the Hartford-based Matos Group is redeveloping Rentschler Field, a 650-acre former airfield in East Hartford used by United Technologies, into nearly 6 million sq ft of mixed-use development. Its first project is construction of a 190,000-sq-ft Cabela’s store, the first New England outlet of the hunting and outdoors retailer. The store – which will include a 30-ft-tall mountain, restaurants, gallery, and gun library for an expected 3 million visitors a year – will serve as an anchor in what has the potential to be a $1.5 billion overall project with retail, office, research and development, and housing components.
One town eastward, in South Windsor, L.L. Bean, the clothing retailer, is building its first 30,000-sq-ft superstore, expected to open in the fall in Evergreen Walk, a lifestyle center being developed by Poag & McEwen of Memphis.
North of Hartford, especially in Windsor, new distribution facilities and corporate office buildings continue to be planned or are under construction in the area south of Bradley International Airport. Walgreens, the retail pharmacy chain, is building a 700,000-sq-ft, $175 million Northeast distribution facility, scheduled to top out in June 2008 and open by the fall of next year after two structures are equipped with highly automated racking systems.
Meanwhile, not far from the new ING building in Windsor, the Hartford, an insurance and financial services group based in Hartford, has plans to build a new office building on a 90-acre site.
Part of Windsor’s attraction is its proximity to the airport, which began its own $200 million modernization and expansion plan in 2000 and is expanding its reach with nonstop service to Denver that started in March and international trans-Atlantic service slated to launch in July.
Bradley is poised for growth, says James McManus, a partner with the S/L/A/M Collaborative, an architectural firm based in nearby Glastonbury.
“There’s a lot of good property around the airport, and as New York and Boston become so unmanageable, more and more will happen around Bradley,” he says.
New ING Headquarters Set to Open in Windsor
by Leonard Felson
The largest office project in the Hartford market in 20 years is on a fast-track pace to open in October when the Connecticut headquarters for ING, the Dutch-based financial services company, moves into its new offices.
 The 475,000-sq-ft, $100 million building, which will include sophisticated sustainable lighting and building automation systems, is under construction in Windsor, Conn., 12 mi north of the company’s present quarters in Hartford. Construction began in May 2005 and it topped out in December.
The company moved to Hartford in 2000 when it purchased Aetna Inc.’s retirement services business. But its lease on the so-called Tower Building on Farmington Avenue, physically connected to Aetna’s headquarters, expires at the end of this year and ING had chosen not to exercise an option to extend the lease another 18 months.
“Our first choice was to stay in Hartford,” but none of the sites worked out, says ING spokesman Philip Margolis. It considered moving across the Connecticut River to Rentschler Field in East Hartford, a deal that would have included a $25 million incentive package from the state, but with pressure to be in new quarters by the end of this year, that site also didn’t work, Margolis adds.
So it turned to a 93-acre site off Day Hill Road, with easy access to Interstate 91 and Bradley International Airport in Windsor. The decision to stay in near Hartford was a boost to the region because ING could have moved to Iowa, where it has a major presence, or to Atlanta, where its U.S. headquarters are based. The Connecticut unit is the company’s largest division in the U.S.
“ING’s corporate commitment to invest in a new state-of-the-art facility in Windsor is a clear expression of confidence by this formidable international company,” said R. Nelson “Oz” Griebel, president and CEO of MetroHartford Alliance, the local chamber of commerce. “It not only represents a significant economic contribution to the state and region, but with 2,000 jobs and the prospect for additional job growth, it is a testament to the quality of our workforce.”
Designed by Apagnolo/Gisness & Associates of Boston, the four-story building of glass and limestone-colored concrete will house not only the 2,000 workers, but has enough space for 500 more. Trammell Crow of Boston is acting as owner’s representative and the general contractor is John Moriarty & Associates, a Winchester, Mass., firm that has Unionville, Conn., offices.
Though ING is not seeking LEED certification, the building will have energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, water-conserving plumbing, and a fully automated lighting system featuring daylight harvesting, which minimizes electrical consumption and uses daylight as a main source of illumination. Part of ING’s corporate policy is to reduce or offset its global CO2 emissions by 30% each year through 2008 compared to its emission levels in 2005.
The building is divided into three parts, anchored by a central section that features a two-story atrium flanked by two wings. Besides a fitness center, the building includes an employee cafeteria with a 20-ft-high ceiling on the top-floor space. The site includes surface parking with 2,200 spaces.
ING received a five-year break on property taxes from Windsor and is negotiating a package of incentives from Connecticut’s state government.
Key Players
Owner: ING, Atlanta; Owner’s Representative: Trammell Crow, Boston; Architect: Apagnolo/Gisness & Associates, Boston; General Contractor: John Moriarty & Associates, Unionville, Conn.
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